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Do You Have Resonance or Dissonance as a Leader?

As you enter a meeting with your team or start a session with a client is the energy you bring to the room enthusiastic and upbeat? Do people love the presence you bring when you enter the room? Is it vibrant like the sun or is it negative? Is there fear, hostility, or pessimism in the air when you enter? Do you sense an emotional toxicity? A toxicity that becomes contagious to those around you. As a leader you either bring resonance or dissonance to your followers. There is no in-between.

We all have those people in our life that no matter what kind of mood we are in they always tend to snap us out of it. We loved the presence that they brought and it brought the best out of us. Or those bosses/ coworkers that no matter what emotional chaos was going on around them they stayed grounded and kept the team afloat. Sometimes they even performed better. It was as if the storm going on fueled them for higher performance. We tend to gravitate towards/ follow these kinds of people because they have what’s called resonance.

Daniel Goleman in the book Primal Leadership states “resonance comes naturally to emotionally intelligent leaders. Their passion and enthusiastic energy resounds throughout the group…while dissonant leadership produces groups that feel emotionally discordant, in which people have a sense of being continually off-key”.

As Goleman states on the flip side we have all had people who as soon as they enter the room you feel the energy drop. You tend to not enjoy being around these people because they display pessimism, anger, or verbal attacks. There tends to be distrust and it can be hard to trust their motives. Often times they rely solely on their authoritarian style to get work done.

So what kind of leader are you? We are all leaders whether we like it or not. We do not need a certain position to be a leader. Being a leader is simply the ability to influence. Are you influencing people for better or for worse? If you think you are neutral then it is probably negative. Being “not bad” is nowhere near being great.

Are you bringing people up who you come into contact with or pushing them down? It is that simple.